Prince of Shadows
by ryquest
Summary: [Utena x Anthy] Utena ponders on the meaning of her quest to seek her Prince and where this quest has led her as she prepares for the final duel with Anthy by her side. Warning: some spoilers regarding the end of the series present.


PRINCE OF SHADOWS  
  
by: ryquest  
  
I often wonder if I will ever stare at reality in the face, when I can unravel all its facets and find the answer to question that I have posted to myself sometime ago. Oh, but how I long make sense out of all the almost-surreal events that have transpired around me. From her inception into my life, I have been caught into a maelstrom of emotions that I am yet learning how to confront. Worse yet, I have allowed myself to sink deeper and deeper into the swirling waters of confusion that now almost constantly defines my life. I have come to this place to seek answers to my past, only to be confronted with even more questions about my future.  
  
From the start I have wanted to protect her, this much I am certain about. I felt a deep wellspring of anger spring from my heart at the sight of Himemiya Anthy lying on the ground after having been hit, silently nursing her already swelling cheek, eyes downcast and misty from tears she will never allow herself to shed. I had wanted to leap down and rush into that glass garden and stop Saonji's raised fist from hitting her again, something I would most attempted to do had Touga not interfered. His intentions, however, I would later learn, were mostly selfish and had nothing to do with wanting to protect her. She was the Rose Bride to him, after all, precious for the mysterious power she had to offer but for nothing else.  
  
But I am selfish myself, I realize now, for wanting to always be her Prince. She has told me once that there was someone she loved one, a Prince, and since then, I have tried to be to her what I am not. She loves another, someone I do not know, a faceless ideal I am trying to emulate. Suddenly I was not trying to find my Prince but I was trying to be the Prince, in order that I could always protect her. So that I could somehow find a way to erase the wistfulness and sadness that seemingly permeates her unconsciously, and find a way to bring sparkle into those eyes that too often appear overcast and distant. It was my duty as her friend, her protector, and perhaps most significantly, as her betrothed.  
  
And yet as I search for a way to free her from the vicious cycle of duels and power that characterizes her world – now mine as well – there is something that gnaws at my consciousness as well. It is the fact that I have appeared to found my own Prince in her brother, with his piercing gaze and unquestionable charm, which I have come to admire for his amiable and dashing yet masterful manner. Someone unendingly wrapped with the scent of white roses, the scent of the Prince who had once come to me in my grief, so long ago, and the reason why I have embarked on my own journey to seek the essence of nobility. Nobility I am still struggling to find and define.  
  
Ohtori Akio. Prince he could not be to me, though, for he is already that to another, his lovely fiancée. I have no hope of tearing him away, for she is much more suitable for him in many ways, with her wealth and attractiveness and the position her father holds in the school. Knowing this, though, I have still come to him, baring myself to him in more ways than one. In doing so, I have passively allowed him to wrench part of my soul away, it seems. And he has taken that part of me that has been aspiring for truth and virtue and nobility for so long. He has shown me such caring and concern, making me appear to be his Princess. Priceless, beautiful, yet bereft.  
  
I have asked myself what it meant to be a Prince on a white horse, the hero who rescued the princesses of the world. The one who knelt before each grief-stricken girl and assured her that he could take all the hurt and pain away. And, for the most part, he did. He made me want to confront life with strength and character, while at the same time awakening in me the desire to be something greater than myself. It seemed the perfect quest to me, once, before I met Anthy and became the Engaged One. Before I came across Akio and I desired to be rescued yet again by an unreachable Prince.  
  
Now it seems to me that I am only a girl, after all, who has not yet become a Prince – perhaps I will never be – but who has not completely ceased wanting to be a Princess. This duality has transformed the reality of my existence and made what was once black-and-white in my perspective unending shades of gray. It seems to me that there are no Princes in the world and no Princesses either. There are only those who struggle to become either one, and those who are caught in the facelessness of existence and doomed to exist as neither.  
  
What of my Bride then, of the inscrutable force in my life that is Anthy? Perhaps she is just as she appears to many – a loner who tends roses, who is happy to be kept within the confines of her glass garden tending to many- hued roses. Or perhaps – as I do so hope – she is stuck in the middle ground just like myself – caught in maintaining her identity as the Rose Bride, and at the same time a person coming to terms with her own strengths and weaknesses her own way. And whether one day she will accept me as her Prince – if I ever become worthy of being one – or I lose her in the final duel and she becomes another's betrothed, the tides of battle will alone determine.  
  
My whole life, it seems, has been wrought in shades and shadows, from the day I have lost my parents on the fateful time when a Prince arrived to transform my view of nobility, to the day when Anthy and I became engaged through the duels and I have learned to look beyond nobility into something much deeper. I have come to love her, this woman of conflicting worlds, disposed to sorrow yet with a limitless capacity for joy that I sense within her, though she has kept this part of herself mostly hidden away. I have come to believe that through the shifting tides of fate, it will probably not matter if I ever become the Prince I so hoped I would become someday. All that would matter is that I could become someone capable of protecting her.  
  
I will duel one last time tonight to dispel the shadows that mark her existence in mine. I intend to lay bare in the light everything that I have come to hold dear, though they be exposed as meaningless lies. For too long as I have viewed the world through tinted rose-colored glasses, wanting only to define the world in terms of Prince and Princesses, and people who are such one way or another. Now I know better. Today I will just be a friend to Anthy, and I will try not to fail that fragile bond of trust and confidence between us. I almost did fail, for I was so intent on being her Prince that all else were shrouded in darkness beyond the peripheral vision of my existence.  
  
Today, perhaps, literally I face the End of the World, both of hers and mine. I stare at the ring on my finger, the rose seal that has for so long been a significant factor of my quest in life. I will use it to open the door to the dueling arena for perhaps the last time in the hope that I can unravel the mystery of the suspended castle and its power to revolutionize the world. In essence, however, I believe my life has been revolutionized for simply having known that nobility is multi-faceted, and that something infinitely more powerful, and that is dreaming even in uncertainty. This is the raw desire to simple be true - true to myself, true to her – and be able to live and love freely and well.  
  
My Prince has been cloaked in darkness for so long that I doubt I will be able to recognize him if we ever met. Perhaps he will always remain there, an ideal removed from reality, a vision formed from hope, his true form impossible to discern from the haze of obscurity. I glance down at the rose seal again, and for once I long not for it to lead me to him, but to be led to my own identity bereft from secrecy, half-truths and lies.  
  
I walk toward her as he waits for me, her gleaming eyes inquiring, pleading and diffidently hopeful at the same time. I smile at her, and raise my hand to show her the rose seal. With it, I hope to affirm her with everything I hope for and all I have fought to become – a flawed Prince, all-too-weak-and-human, and yet still burning with devotion for the ideal of nobility and for her. She nods slowly; in her gaze there is trust and willingness, I know she understands. Through the uncertainty she stands with me, my Rose Bride, as we take this final step to freedom.  
  
  
  
Disclaimer: Utena, Anthy and all the other characters do not belong in any way to me, and are the creation of Chiho Saito, Be Papas/Shogakukan and all other official copyrights involved.  
  
This is my take on Utena's feelings as she approaches the final duel and confronts the issues that define her relationship with Anthy. For any comments or suggestions, please leave feedback or send email. Arigato! 


End file.
